The Courses

Six Credits

Finding real passion for your learning can be tricky in any given semester, because you have so many different classes to take and so many responsibilities outside of school. Enter The Catalyst. With us, you will be taking two courses that relate to our classroom cities in vitally important and exciting ways. (Meanwhile, you and your fellow students will be freed from work commitments and all of the other distractions of a typical semester.) The dynamism of our program’s academics is its beauty. In each of our cities, our faculty will give you the wide-angle view of the European classroom you meet each day, from the Renaissance to the Holocaust. While your two Elective Courses will be your summer’s telephoto lenses, bringing your classroom cities and your material into a special focus that only specific disciplines can help you to attain. You will take one of these three-credit courses in London/Paris and the other of them in Berlin/Prague. Students who come on The Catalyst receive credits approved and administered by the University of West Florida. If you’re not a student at UWF, no worries. Our credits transfer to any university or college in the USA, but you should still print up the syllabi below for the classes you want to take with us and discuss these with your academic advisor(s).

First Session Electives

First Session Elective Courses: London and Paris

Choose your first-session Catalyst elective course so that the disciplinary and intellectual direction you take feeds your passion and advances the goals you’ve set for your Catalyst journey. All courses are three credit hours and are taught in London and Paris, during the first two weeks of The Catalyst. You must take one of these courses but may not take more than one.

One hundred years ago, the greatest war that man had ever known was being fought “eye deep in hell,” as the armies of Europe dug into the mud of Flanders and northern France along a ragged line of trenches that snaked from the North Sea to The Alps. Our class will study this war as we make London and Paris–two of its greatest capital cities–our amazing classrooms. From the Imperial War Museum to the Queen’s Square Archives to the Public Records Office, we will explore how and why the war was fought as it was by the British. Then when we get to France, we will shift our the French experience as we focus on where the greatest battles of the war were actually fought. Fiction, poetry, art and photography will all factor into our history, as will the hand-written accounts of the war and the war-at-home that we will find in British and French archives. World War Two would kill and maim many more souls than the First World War. And yet for most historians and for anybody who is French or British, it will always be 1914-1918 that will be called “The Great War.” Click here to review the 2017 syllabus for In Flanders Fields (1) (1)

There may be better cities one can go to learn to love art photography, but London and Paris raise pretty strong arguments on their own behalf. So will you, when you’ve taken a week of living and learning in each of these amazing cities, all the while you immerse yourself in the techniques of art photography. Your own facility as an art photographer will improve daily, as our classes use museums, galleries, streets, parks and outsider art/street art to improve how you and where you see and capture beauty. Click here to the the Shutterspeed 2017 syllabus (1)

Massacres, beheadings and murders of future saints: except for the dragons, the Game of Thrones has few plot twists that can rival the real life drama in the histories of the kings of England and France. This course will explore some of the most dramatic moments in the history of both realms—including the execution of the future saint Thomas More, the drama surrounding Henry VIII’s many wives, the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre during royal wedding celebrations in Paris, the courtly intrigue of Louis XIV’s Versailles, and the beheading of Charles I of England and Louis XVI of France. Through these events, we will explore London and Paris as our living classrooms, while we examine the brutal realities of power politics at the highest level in pre-modern Europe. Click here to review our ThroneGames Syllabus

Madness has been conceptualized in many ways over the centuries. From the iconic statues of “Raving and Melancholy Madness” that stood outside of Bedlam in the 17th century; to the fits and poses of the “hysterics” in Charcot’s La Salpetriere; to the mute soldiers of the Great War suffering from “shell shock”; to modern day notions of “mental illness”. This class travels to these historic institutions and takes a close-up look at the connections between trauma and the development of human problems over the centuries. And what does social psychology teach us regarding the development of historic political movements like the French Revolution and the rise and fall of Nazism? This course will use social psychological concepts to analyze these movements, the coming to power of individuals like Napoleon, Robespierre, DeGaulle, Churchill, & Hitler, and the various methods and workings of propaganda. An analysis that informs not only the past, but current political movements and world leaders as well, Madness–as we explore trauma, propaganda, and leadership, will definitely not be your typical psychology class. But then, London and Paris are far indeed from you normal classrooms! Click here to review a draft of our 2016 Syllabus for Madness.

This upper-division course in Psychology will explore the theory and practice of Positive Psychology in Europe today, focussing on public health, urban environment and treatment protocols related to anxiety and depressive disorders that relay on techniques of positive psychology and uses of urban environments in the cities of London and Paris.

This course will use London and Paris as laboratories to study and test ideas about consumer behavior and marketing practices in global business today.

Second Session Electives

Second Session Elective Courses: Berlin and Prague

Choose your second-session Catalyst elective course to complement what you studied in London and Paris. All of our second session courses are three credit hours and are taught in Berlin and Prague, during the second two weeks of The Catalyst. You must take one of these courses but may not take more than one.

The pink triangle was born in Nazi Germany as a means of identifying gay people to discriminate against, round up and eventually murder in the 1940s. Yet as this class will show, the sometimes brutal cultural, medical and state politics of sexual orientation and gender identities were not born with Hitler. Before and after the Nazis, sex and gender roles have been hotly contested aspects of social life in Europe and beyond and remain so to this day.

Few classrooms can compare to Berlin and Prague when it comes to studying Nazism and the Holocaust. Berlin was the epicenter of the New Order that Hitler built, and the vestiges of the 1933-1945 era remain very present here. From the museum that stands today where Gestapo Headquarters were in the Nazi era to the roll call field at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, our class will walk the terrible trail that was the path of the Nazis and their war against the Jews and others whom the regime deemed “undesirable.” From Berlin, we will go as the Nazis did and follow their swath of occupation and murder East, to the Jewel of former Czechoslovakia, Prague. Where Hitler and Himmler installed their most trusted and brutal soldier. General Reinhard Heydrich, to govern the conquered city and the “protectorate” of which it was the centerpiece. And where the covert mission “Anthropoid” crystallized in the 1942, in the assassination of Heydrich. We will study how the Nazi occupation worked, as we also explore how resistance movements grew up in Prague and elsewhere, as we take as our classrooms such hallowed places as the village of Lidice, the Cathedral of St. Cyril and St. Methodius and Prague Castle itself. Click here to review the 2017 syllabus for Nazism and the Holocaust Syllabus (1) (1)

Camera optics were originally not fast enough to keep up with the human smile. By the time that changed, the pace of modern life had increased to a frenzied degree that nobody could have imagined when photography began. If you love art, museums, cameras and photography, this course should be at the heart of your Catalyst journey. As you traverse The Catalyst cities, you will make galleries, museums, urban ruins, monuments and the hidden vestiges of Europe’s complicated past your unforgettable classrooms, while you take time to delve deeply into the techniques of art photography and prepare a professional-grade portfolio from the images you shoot. Click here to review the Multiple Exposures 2017 syllabus (1)

Fascism. Communism. Totalitarianism. Nationalism. Existentialism. Cubism. Dadaism. Surrealism. To the student of culture in the 20th century, it would seem that the century was driven by belief systems and movements that controlled art and politics. The individual caught in the force and current of these movements often had few options for survival; the currents of destruction and terror and isolation seemed overwhelming. This course examines these historical forces, but more importantly, it looks at the human response to these historical forces: the attempt on the part of the individual to maintain some semblance of routine and normality, the attempt on the part of the individual to maintain some sense of self and individuality, the attempt on the part of the individual to maintain some sense of meaning and purpose. Click here to review our Being and Nothingness Syllabus 2017 (1)

There aren’t always clear rules on how to succeed in global business. Rather the rules are fluid and are culturally determined. Getting the rules wrong might not mean you fail as a business person abroad. But hardly anybody wants to be unintentional in slighting or insulting the cultures or communicative standards of folks with whom one is conducting global business. This course will give you a lifelong tool kit for successful human and business interactions in the Eurozone, while taking you out to meet corporate and political leaders in two of the most important tourist urban economies in Europe: Berlin and Prague.

Faculty

Professors are selected to join The Catalyst because of their expertise in our teaching fields and because of their vast experience in global research and education. That Catalyst routinely draws top professors from 5-6 different academic institutions in the USA. If you’d like to learn more about how you can join our faculty in a future summer, contact Dr. Doug Mackaman, Director of The Catalyst.

Dr. Michelle Parkinson is Associate Professor of English at University of Wisconsin – River Falls. Her research encompasses a broad range of topics related to Renaissance literature. She has written about Elizabeth I, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Mary Queen of Scots. She is interested in queer and Lacanian approaches to early modern literature and in particular, the intersections of sexuality, gender, and power. She is currently in the midst of a project on John Milton’s Paradise Lost, called, “Milton’s Animals.”

Dr. Eric W. Nelson, Professor of History at Missouri State University, completed his graduate work at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. His research focuses broadly on the art of statecraft in late medieval and early modern Europe. He has written about religious war, peacemaking after sectarian violence and the idea and practice of divine right kingship. He is currently in the midst of a project that explores the built political landscapes of European capitals as focal points for the exercise of state power and the display of royal authority.

Dr. Alison Green teaches in the areas of Human Resources, Education and Organizational Learning in the Department of Global Hospitality and Tourism Management at the University of West Florida.

Green, an Assistant Professor, conducts research in these areas as well as examining the value of certification in the hospitality industry and determining what skills employers expect from graduates of f00d-and-beverage hospitality programs.

She is co-author of Hospitality Learners Model, which examines many facets of hospitality and hospitality education.

Check back in October for a full bio.

Dr. Felicia Morgan is Associate Professor of Marketing at the UWF. Check back in October for a full bio.

Dr. Douglas P. Mackaman is Distinguished Visiting Professor of European History and Global Programs at the University of West Florida and founding director of The Catalyst and The Village Programs. Previously, Dr. Mackaman was tenured full professor of French History and Global Studies at The University of Southern Mississippi, where he served as Director of The British Studies Program and was also founding Director of both The Abbey and The Compass Programs. Dr. Mackaman has written widely in the cultural history of Europe from the 18th century onward and has been teaching US students abroad since 1996. Dr. Mackaman consults widely in global program development.

Richard Seefeldt is Professor of Psychology at The University of Wisconsin River-Falls, where he is a counseling psychologist who teaches courses in General, Abnormal, Personality, and Clinical Psychology. His research interests have focused on addictive behaviors, social cognitive aspects of evaluation and relationships, and the history of madness. Rik has taught study-abroad students all over Europe for more than a decade.

Dr. Andrew Woolley is Professor of English at Southwestern Adventist University, where he also is Director of Honors. Dr. Woolley has been teaching US students abroad regularly since the early 1990s, with London, Athens, Rome, Venice and Paris as his more recent abroad “classrooms” of choice.

Dr. Travis Tubre is Professor and Chair of Psychology at The University of Wisconsin-River Falls and Senior Lecturer at the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. Dr. Tubré has taught US students abroad in England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scotland.

Dr. Darren Bernal is Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of West Florida. He teaches counseling, group psychology, multicultural psychology, community psychology, abnormal psychology, and cultural psychology. Bernal’s research focuses on socioeconomic status, social connectedness, mindfulness and well-being.

Dr. Joni Henry Noble is Professor of Art and Photography at The University of Louisiana Monroe, where she also lives and works as a practicing and well-known visual artist. Dr. Noble’s recent honors as an artist include the presentation of her work in the famed Summer Exhibition of the British Royal Academy in 2015. She has been teaching students in Europe regularly for a decade and is one of the founding professors of The Catalyst Programs.